Instructions for Authors

Oncomedicine welcomes submissions of research papers, reviews, mini-reviews and short research communications in all oncology and medicine areas. High quality reviews from leading researchers are particularly welcome and they will be processed in high priority and speed.

The Journal does not set specific length limit on research papers and reviews; however, authors are urged to be concise. Short research communication is limited to be under 2500 words. Authors can choose any preferred style and format for submission. For regular research papers, the Journal recommends that they are organized as Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussions, followed by Acknowledgements, Conflict of Interest, and References.

Case report: This journal does not publish case reports.

Plagiarism

A note on plagiarism (please read before submission): There is a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) in our journal. Manuscripts are screened for plagiarism before, during, and after publication, and if found they will be rejected at any stage of processing. In case that a paper is already published in our journal and appears in PubMed Central but plagiarism is still detected, it will be retracted from our journal and the authors' institutions and department heads will be notified to take actions.

Submission

All files should be submitted online in the journal's web site. Submissions by email of any manuscript files, either to the editors or to the journal office, are not acceptable and are discarded automatically.

Please embed figures and tables in the manuscript to become one single file for submission in the journal website. Once submission is complete, the system will generate a manuscript ID sent to author's contact email.

Supplementary file: The initial submission allows one supplementary file to be submitted together with the main manuscript file and cover letter. If you have more than one supplementary files, you can submit the extra ones after the initial submission in the manuscript login page (under "Supplementary file" heading, click on the link "[Add More]").

To submit a revision, please login in here and follow the "Submit revision" link. Please do not submit revision as new submission.

Note: After the manuscript is accepted, any inquiry related to publishing (copyediting, fees, proofs, etc) must be addressed to our publishing team only. Please do not send or cc any publishing-related inquiry to our editor-in-chief or editors as they are not involved in the publishing process after a manuscript is accepted.

Review/Decisions

Manuscripts that are judged to be of insufficient quality or unlikely to be competitive enough for publication are rejected during initial screening. The remaining manuscripts go through a single-blind peer review process with two or more reviewers. In single-blind review, reviewers' identities are hidden from the authors but not vice versa. Possible decisions after review are: accept as is, minor revision, major revision, or reject. Authors should submit back their revisions within 1 month in the case of minor revision, or 3 months in the case of major revision. To submit a revision please sign in here and use the submit button at the right side of page. Manuscripts
with significant results are typically reviewed and published at the highest priority.

Publication Charges

There is no publication charge during the current promotional period of this journal. There is no submission charge.

Format for Publication

Upon acceptance of the manuscript, please provide a final version (in Microsoft Word file) for copyediting purpose. Note that the final manuscript must be provided in Microsoft Word, and we cannot accept Latex and Tex files.

Please include figures at the end of manuscript Word file, or provide a high quality PDF containing all figures. Make sure images are of highest resolution, and any letters inside are clear and legible. If the figures or tables are created using PowerPoint, Photoshop, Microsoft Excel etc, please also provide the original files from those programs.

Title Page

The first letter of each word in title should use upper case.
Include in the first page the article title, author's names, affiliations, corresponding author's phone/fax number and/or email.
Abstract should not contain citations to references. Also provide 3-6 keywords.

Author's names: please provide full names. Important! Please write first name and middle name before surname or lastname, e.g., "Mike Johnson" (not "Johnson, Mike"; not "Johnson M."; not "M. Johnson").

Text

In the main text or figure/table legends, please do not color the fonts or use smaller font size to distinguish one text from other texts. In our xml, only bold, italic, superscript and subscript are allowed.

Please do not add number before subtitles (This does not apply for Review or mini-review).

Tables and Figures

Tables and Figures should be numbered consecutively. Citation of tables and figures should use the format: Table 1, Table 2, ... Figure 1, Figure 2, ... (or Fig. 1, Fig. 2, ...). Parts in a figure can be identified by A, B, C, D, ... . and cited as Figure 2A, Figure 2B, Figure 2C. Do not abbreviate the word "Table" to "Tab.".

Tables: Please create/format tables using Microsoft Word table format. Tables must be editable, and not as images.

Figures: Resolutions for line arts must be at least 1200 dpi, for color photos at least 300 dpi or higher, and for black/white photos at least 600dpi or higher. It is strongly suggested to provide all images at 600 dpi or higher.

Math Formulas and Symbols

Simple
mathematical formulas should be constructed in normal text using superscript, subscript,
italic, and symbols in Microsoft Word.

Use symbols in the Fonts: (normal text) or Symbol fonts. To insert a symbol, use Insert/symbol in the
Word menu.

Use
/ for "divide" or "over". For example, 1/7, 5/(4+6).

Use
Symbol fonts for "±"; "≤" and "≥" (avoid underline).

Please avoid using math equations of Word whenever possible, because in full text xml/html version, math equations are replaced by images, which does not look good in the normal flow of text.

References

References should be numbered consecutively starting from 1, and should be cited in the manuscript by numbers, e.g. [1,2,3], (not cited by author and date). One article per reference only (not 1a, 1b, 1c). Please avoid putting personal communications, unpublished observations, conference abstracts or conference papers in references. Do not format references as footnotes. A reference style for EndNote may be found here.

Please note the number of references must not exceed 200 for any article.

Web pages and Web links

We discourage mentioning or citing web pages or web links in your paper, since web addresses are changed frequently by their owners. This often results in broken links (dead links) in your paper in the future. It is annoying if readers cannot find the web pages when clicking on the links.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary materials may include figures, tables, methods, videos, and other materials. They are available online linked to the original published article. Supplementary tables and figures should be labeled with "S1", "S2", ... E.g. Table S1, Figure S1, Video/Movie S1, and cited in the manuscript in the same way. Do not write them as "S Table 1" or "S Figure 1".

The maximum file size for supplementary materials is 10MB each un-compressed. Please kept the files as small possible to avoid the frustrations experienced by readers with downloading large files. Large files can be compressed into a ZIP file, but not RAR.

Supplementary materials are published as provided by the authors, and are not copyedited.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations must be presented in one paragraph, in the format: "term: definition". Please separate the items by ";". Please strictly follow the format.

Ethics
Committee Approval and Patient Consent

Experimental research
involving human or animals should have been approved by author's institutional
review board or ethics committee. This information can be mentioned in the manuscript
including the name of the board/committee that gave the approval. Investigations
involving humans will have been performed in accordance with the principles of
Declaration of Helsinki. And the use of animals in experiments will have observed the Interdisciplinary Principles and Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research, Testing, and Education by the New York Academy of Sciences, Ad Hoc Animal Research Committee.

If
the manuscript contains photos or parts of photos of patients, informed consent
from each patient should be obtained. Patient's identities and privacy should
be carefully protected in the manuscript.

Competing Interests

Competing interests that might interfere with the objective presentation of the research
findings contained in the manuscript should be declared in a paragraph heading
"Competing interests" (after Acknowledgment section and before References).
Examples of competing interests are ownership of stock in a company, commercial grants,
board membership, etc. If there is no competing interest, please use the statement
"The authors have declared that no competing interest exists".

Author Biography

Authors now have the option to publish a biography together with the paper, with information such as MD/PhD degree, past and present positions, research interests, awards, etc. This increases the profile of the authors and is well received by international readers. Author biography can be added to the end of paper, in a section heading "Author biography". See samples of author biography, Sample A or Sample B.

Commercial advertising

Commercial advertising is not allowed in our journal.

Reprints

Reprints can be ordered
after copyediting and publication. Reprints are now printed on glossy paper with cover page. They are made of highest quality suitable for
scientific corresponding.

For general information about preparing biomedical manuscripts, please consult the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication", available from http://www.icmje.org/.